A modular server includes several distinct servers, or blade servers. The blade servers are mounted in a chassis, which in turn couples the servers to hard disk storage, an Ethernet connection, a keyboard and/or a mouse via respective interfaces. This arrangement allows the blade servers to share these peripheral devices and to be managed centrally.
In order to manage a blade server, a chassis management module (CMM) requires information from the BIOS (i.e., low level firmware) of the blade server. Since the CMM may or not be active when the blade information becomes available (e.g., during boot), a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) acts as a repository for this information until the CMM requests it. The CMM is responsible for maintaining this information.
Since blade servers and the CMM can each be hot-swapped, the BMC data should maintain an up-to-date version of the blade information. However, the BIOS information is only transmitted from a blade at boot time, and cannot be obtained once the blade OS is up. Systems are desired to maintain current BIOS information through the various combinations of hot swap, BMC firmware update, or reset.